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Miniver Cheevy -- Edwin Arlington Robinson

       
(Poem #234) Miniver Cheevy
 Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
    Grew lean while he assailed the seasons
 He wept that he was ever born,
    And he had reasons.

 Miniver loved the days of old
    When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
 The vision of a warrior bold
    Would send him dancing.

 Miniver sighed for what was not,
    And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
 He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
    And Priam's neighbors.

 Miniver mourned the ripe renown
    That made so many a name so fragrant;
 He mourned Romance, now on the town,
    And Art, a vagrant.

 Miniver loved the Medici,
    Albeit he had never seen one;
 He would have sinned incessantly
    Could he have been one.

 Miniver cursed the commonplace
    And eyed a khaki suit with loathing:
 He missed the medieval grace
    Of iron clothing.

 Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
    But sore annoyed was he without it;
 Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
    And thought about it.

 Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
    Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
 Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
    And kept on drinking.
-- Edwin Arlington Robinson
  "During these years Robinson perfected the poetic form for which he became
  so well known: a structure based firmly on stanzas, skillful rhyming
  patterns, and a precise and natural diction, combined with a dramatic
  examination of the human condition." -- EB

That pretty much sums up the reasons I enjoy his work, and today's poem is
an excellent example; a skilful portrait of a man born after his time, or at
least, a man who thinks so. It is also, on a larger level, a criticism of
an increasingly widespread syndrome - the tendency to idealise and
romanticise the past, not for its own merits but simply from a desire to
escape the present. Miniver Cheevy does not sound like the kind of person
who'd have lasted long in any of his beloved days of old.

m.

Biography and Assessment:

  Robinson, Edwin Arlington

  b. Dec. 22, 1869, Head Tide, Maine, U.S.
  d. April 6, 1935, New York, N.Y. American poet who is best known for
  his short dramatic poems concerning the people in a small New England
  village, Tilbury Town, very much like the Gardiner, Maine, in which he
  grew up.

  After his family suffered financial reverses, Robinson cut short his
  attendance at Harvard University (1891-93) and returned to Gardiner to
  stay with his family, whose fortunes were disintegrating. The lives of
  both his brothers ended in failure and early death, and Robinson's
  poetry is much concerned with personal defeat and the tragic
  complexities of life. Robinson himself endured years of poverty and
  obscurity before his poetry began to attract notice.

  His first book, The Torrent and the Night Before, was privately
  printed at his own expense. His subsequent collections, The Children
  of the Night (1897) and The Town Down the River (1910), fared little
  better, but the publication of The Man Against the Sky (1916) brought
  him critical acclaim. In these early works his best poetic form was
  the dramatic lyric, as exemplified in the title poem of The Man
  Against the Sky, which affirms life's meaning despite its profoundly
  dark side. During these years Robinson perfected the poetic form for
  which he became so well known: a structure based firmly on stanzas,
  skillful rhyming patterns, and a precise and natural diction, combined
  with a dramatic examination of the human condition. Among the best
  poems of this period are "Richard Cory," "Miniver Cheevy," "For a Dead
  Lady," "Flammonde," and "Eros Turannos." Robinson broke with the
  tradition of late Romanticism and introduced the preoccupations and
  plain style of naturalism into American poetry. His work attracted the
  attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, who gave him a sinecure at
  the U.S. Customs House in New York (held from 1905 to 1909).

  In the second phase of his career, Robinson wrote longer narrative poems
  that share the concern of his dramatic lyrics with psychological
  portraiture. Merlin (1917), the first of three long blank-verse narrative
  poems based on the King Arthur legends, was followed by Lancelot (1920)
  and Tristram (1927). Robinson's Collected Poems appeared in 1921. The Man
  Who Died Twice (1924) and Amaranth (1934) are perhaps the most often
  acclaimed of his later narrative poems, though in general these works
  suffer in comparison to the early dramatic lyrics. Robinson's later short
  poems include "Mr. Flood's Party," "Many Are Called," and "The Sheaves."

                -- EB

108 comments: ( or Leave a comment )

rben6 said...

I'd really like to know more of what is behind this poem, what he really
means by all the words that he's saying.I think if anyone knows, or
thinks they have a good understaning or it, then they should write and
tell us all.
-HB

StarRocker4Life said...

Hi I attend Sussex Tech High and my English Teacher taught us this poem and
we had to make a "mini" story to go along with it. I some what understand
this but, all poems have more then 1 explanation!

~Lindsey~

Ed Carroll said...

While the poem on the surface is about a man stuck dreaming of the past
instead of his own present, the greater power of the poem is underneath and
revealed in the final line. Miniver was drinking, which says much more
about his choices in his own life than his dreams of the past do. My
father, who drank heavily for most of his life, often quoted this poem for
he knew the feeling of quietly wasting your life away by drinking alone.

Hess Loren said...

I find Robinson's choice of a name for this character interesting: Miniver
Cheevy. Minimum Achiever.

A dreamer, not a doer; Minimer was one caught up in life of "quiet
desperation."

He escaped the angst of his reality by dreaming of the past; and he coped
with his reality by drinking.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Loren Hess
Director of Employee Relations
METT Therapy Services, Incext. 5690

Francis Dyer said...

Minniver Cheevey is one of those poems that haunt you. The first time you
read it, you know it's about those other people. Then you realize it's
about you and you can't believe it so you go back to it and reread it
looking for the word or line that let's you off the hook.

Francis E.

Harry Hoffner said...

I seem to remember a different couplet when I learned this poem as a
child:

"Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Cursed the day that he was born"

I guess tht must have been an unauthorised version!

Frederic Coudert said...

This so-called "unauthorised version" that Miniver "cursed the day
that he was born" sounds very familiar to me also. Could it be an
earlier unfinished version from the poet?

Jack and Janet LeSuer said...

Egads!

What?

jal

Jack and Janet LeSuer said...

Well, I guess you really are wrong.

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Lester @ Adult Tricycle said...

I first encountered Richard Cory in 1976. I was a big fan of Paul McCartney and had tickets to his Wings Over America tour in Landover, MD. He performed an acoustic song that I later learned was written by Simon and Garfunkel and based on the poem of the same name by Edwin Arlington Robinson. After I looked up the poem, it instantly became one of my favorites.

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he wasted his life for dreaming about the past...so he cant enjoy his life...He always depends drinking and lean.he complaining about all the things he losed his earlier life...such as medici,priarm and knights...he throwned away his life for thinking about the grate things which he losed his own exicting perod...

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